1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computer-aided product designing assistant device and a product designing assistant method for assisting designing of an industrial product and its life cycle, such that the environmental load which is put on the environment due to the product through the entire product life cycle including acquisition of materials of the product, manufacturing of the product, usage of the manufactured product and disposal of the product that has been used up, is reduced to a level lower than those of conventional products.
2. Related Art
With the developments of industry and economy, a fear has come to arise that the earth will get warmed-up due to the green house effect which results from an increasing amount of discharged gases. On the other hand, there also have arisen various problems such as the destruction of nature resulting from throwing-away of a huge amount of disuse rubbish and trashes, the environmental pollution resulting from harmful materials and substances contained therein, etc. From these points of view, the mitigation of the environmental load on the earth has been becoming an important task in the field of industry.
In a case where considering the environmental load in relation to the industry of manufacture, it is insufficient to set a sight on a range that merely covers the acquisition of materials of a product, the manufacturing thereof and the forwarding of the manufactured product. In such a case, it is also necessary to take the environmental load given during the process including the disposal stage and the recycling stage into consideration. In addition, in the case of a product which is followed by the consumption of energy when put to practical use, such as home electric appliances, automobiles and the like, it is necessary that consideration is given also to the consumption of energy during the process in which a product that has been handed to a user is utilized.
On this account, a designing assistant technique that a stress is placed upon the process of life cycle becomes more and more important from now onward, so as to certainly reduce the environmental load due to the designed and manufactured product in the entire product life cycle covering from the acquisition of materials to the disposal phases to a level lower than in the case of a conventional product.
Meanwhile, considering the conventional designing assistant technique, there are the following inconveniences (1) to (3) for designing ECP (Environmental Conscious Products) and planning a life cycle process thereof.
(1) The conventional designing assistant technique inconveniently permits a person who performs designing to enter upon his designing of a concrete structure according solely to his personal way of thinking, while the designing issues and the concept associated with the environmental factors that are the most important for each product to be designed are left unclear. Therefore, it is unavoidable in such designing to possibly reach his design solution that is not very effective, from the synthetic and overall point of view, for the reduction of the environmental load.
The reason for this is because, although it is naturally preferred to find a satisfactory solution to each of the designing issues concerning the environment (the energy saving, the recycle capability enhancement, etc.), such a designing solution that can give an optimum value to all the designing issues associated with the environment does not commonly exist. Accordingly, in actual product designing, it is necessary to provide a designing concept such that, from the synthetic point of view, a sight is concentratedly focused on the most important issues for the product to be designed so as to effectively design an environmentally conscious product.
(2) Since the concept regarding the environment is not clear, the efficiency of designing is sometimes decreased by using an environmental evaluation apparatus that will not be useful in truth with regard to the aimed product, or by spending a large amount of time in evaluation whose results only has low importance, etc.
(3) Also when determining a design solution among a plurality of design candidates produced by trial designing, it is still unclear which designing issue associated with the environment is important to what extent. Therefore, it sometimes happens to inconveniently select such a design that is not very effective for the decrease in the environmental load as a design solution.
Accordingly, it has been highly expected to develop a sure and highly reliable designing assistant technique for enabling the development of a product of new design so as to certainly reduce the environmental load of the designed product through the entire product life cycle covering from the acquisition of materials thereof to the disposal of the used-up product to a lower level than in the case of a conventional product.